It's an understandable mistake to assume that Rainbow Moon is a game starring pretty ponies rather than hordes of bloodthirsty monsters. Despite the fruity-sounding title, the game is actually a dungeon crawler that blends the exploration and randomized dungeon elements of games like Diablo with a turn-based strategic battle system. It's an interesting premise that holds up fairly well but is dragged down a bit by some questionable design decisions and a poor localization.

Rainbow Moon is fairly light on story. The player starts out as a warrior who has been pushed through a mysterious portal by a rival. Landing on a candy-colored fantasy world called Rainbow Moon, the player character discovers that he's been accompanied by a gigantic horde of demons. He just wants to go home, but the locals understandably blame him for the catastrophe that has befallen their world, insisting on his help with their troubles before they'll assist him on his own quest.

It's all just a perfunctory setup to send the player out exploring the world and dredging through dungeons, which is just as well. The quests given by the inhabitants of Rainbow Moon are made particularly ridiculous due to poorly localized text. Some of the dialogue is, I believe, supposed to be humorous, but it ends up being funny for the wrong reasons, as it appears to have been penned by a non-native English speaker who has watched plenty of American TV but doesn't quite have a handle on everyday conversation. The awkward phrasing found in the game doesn't usually get in the way of comprehension, but it mars the experience and destroys most of the writers' actual attempts at humor.

Once the requisite quests have been picked up, it's off to explore the world, venture through a nice mix of randomized and hand-designed dungeons, fight monsters, fight more monsters, and fight even more monsters. Rainbow Moon is all about combat, and fortunately the combat system is fairly interesting. Old-school RPG gamers may see shades of the old Dungeons & Dragons Gold Box games, in which battle took place on a grid and often involved positioning characters properly in order to do as much damage and take as little damage as possible. The setup is similar here, but with a flexible turn order that depends on the speed of the characters and monsters.

The player will pick up more characters as the adventure progresses, with up to three characters in the battle party at once. Each character is locked to a single weapon type, so battle strategy involves positioning party members in order to hit monsters that are weak to particular weapons while avoiding being hit by dangerous monsters. It's a bit like a deadly game of Hokey Pokey, with the characters and monsters dancing around each other in order to gain the advantage in battle. Learning the movement and attack abilities of the monsters is vital, although the game inexplicably doesn't allow its battle grid to be displayed, leading to occasional accidents if the player miscounts the number of squares that an enemy unit is about to move.

In fact, the devil is in the details of Rainbow Moon's control system and interface, with a preponderance of small issues keeping the game from being all it can be. The movement controls are awkward, requiring the player to use the four D-pad directional keys to move around the grid, which is slanted diagonally on the screen. Although the game displays the correct button to press in order to get to a particular square, it's easy to instinctively go the wrong direction, especially at first. It's also easy to move accidentally, since the D-pad is also used to select battle menu options, leading to the player moving instead of attacking if s/he forgets to cancel out of movement before using the menu.

Attack commands are inconsistent, as well. Regular melee attacks are executed by pressing a directional button on the D-pad, similar to movement commands. Special attacks and regular ranged attacks, however, are executed by positioning the cursor over the desired square and pressing X. Some special attacks allow the cursor to be moved, while others do not, and the game doesn't explain this feature very well. These different ways of entering commands mess with the flow of battle, making it feel choppier than it needs to be. Battles are still fun, but a stronger interface and control scheme would have made them quicker and easier to manage.